In session 1, the party retreated to the Castle's exterior to take stock. Merry, Jude, Rety, and Nononn make a plan of attack once the foyer doors open in the morning.
Session 1.5 presented the character sheets. If you want to know what the party has, take a moment to review.
The party obtained some treasure, but more importantly, received two Demos Magen who are now behaving oddly. They make the choice to leave them outside under the watchful eye of Pizzaballa while the rest of the team explores the northwestern corner of the castle.
Rety checks the door just south of rooms 6, 7, and 8 and finds it unlocked. As the main party listens at door 8, there is a click. Alexei and Lance walked to room 6 and opened the door. Nononn has a caniption. While the team searches the linen closet, he orders the two green characters into the main hall to listen for Pizzaballa and keep watch on the approach.
The party doesn't hear anything in room 8 and opens the door. They study the slime-encrusted room and decide that there is nothing of interest at the moment. They close the door.
Rety believes she heard something in room 7, so the party arms itself for battle. In reality, she failed her roll and reacted to an imagined sound.
Rety, Merry, and Kuri take a knee, bows drawn in 5 feet back from the door. Behind them, the magic-using characters stand ready to fling magic missiles over the bowmen's heads. Thomas and Dorian flank either side of the door to push it open. Behind the clerics, Jude and Nononn wait, weapons drawn.
This is Kevin.
On the other side of the door, Ted turns to Bob and hisses, "Did you hear that?"
Kevin waves 6 of his eight legs. "Someone's stealing our towels."
The Arenea ready themselves for what will be known as The Battle of Soap and Towels.
This is one of those odd times, where A) I wasn't going to do a commercial but now am, and B) one module refers to another. Castle Amber refers the reader to X1, which features the Arenea as antagonists to the Phantons on the Isle of Dread.
In this case, neither side will engage in movement. Everyone is locked and loaded. Thomas unlatches the door. Both Dorian and Thomas give it a good push. Initiative is simultaneous, and no one is surprised.
I have decided I didn't like the Arenea's spells and gave them different ones, but it doesn't matter much. All three bow wielders target Bob and let fly. Not only is his spell foiled, but he drops dead. Kevin and Ted unleash Magic Missiles at the same time as Solvo, Sybil, and Belaphon.
All of the magic users are hit and are slightly toasty. Since the party is making all kinds of noise, I roll for a wandering monster and get Raskasta. Alexei and Lance notice the largest Cat Man they have ever seen and retreat into the corner of the main hall, trying not to be seen. A group of five of them come out of the Study. No one looks at Alexei and Lance.
Round 2. The Arenea win initiative and take the fight vertical, skittering up the walls to the ceiling. Thomas, Dorian, Nononn, and Jude rush into the room. The two Arenea try to blind Nononn and Jude with continual light spells, but fail. Jude has a polearm and is able to take Ted off the ceiling.
The party found better jewelry than this.
The lead Raskasta gives a gruff command to a young woman and closes the door to the Study. The woman runs off down the hall to the Indoor Forest.
Round 3. The bowmen advance, and the party mops the floor with Kevin. Solvo, Bel, and Sybil wander out into the main hallway to regroup as the rest of the party searches for more monsters hiding in the webs.
Bel sees the door to the Indoor Forest close. He looks to Lance and Alexei, but they are nowhere to be found. Bel lets out a groan as Sybil runs to the foyer to check on Pizzaballa.
The party splits again. Bel, leads Nononn, Solvo, and Rety to the doors to the Forest, bows ready. Sybil and Pizzaballa return to the southside of the main hall with Merry and his bow for cover. Kuri, Jude, Dorian, and Thomas continue to search the Arenea lair.
Bel opens the door to the Forest. There is no one in sight. They communicate this the best they can with hand gestures to Merry's team. Jude collects up the treasure they find in the lair and returns to the team in the main hallway.
Each character has gained 435 Experience, except Lance, Alexei, and Pizzaballa, who missed out on the combat. This closes up Session 2. I hope you enjoyed it.
Here is the scorecard post. I should have started with a character list and character sheets. You know why? In Session 1, I put Lance at the front and in the last rank in the marching order. Dummy. Tracking 13 characters is a beast.
These are PDF files from my Google Drive account. You don't need an account to download them
There are also Demos Magen with the party now. They do not have character sheets.
If I had posted these earlier, I would have successfully completed my #CharacterCreationChallenge. As it stands, I am still a few short.
Before we go further, let's have the overt DriveThruRPG commercial:
I use Necrotic Gnome's Old-School Essentials. I picked up the boxed sets from a Kickstarter. You can approximate this with two titles: The Referee's Tome and The Player's Tome. Or you could taste test it with the Basic Rules. These are free.
Exactly why I haven't been posting links to X2 Castle Amber is beyond me. I've been nattering on about it for weeks.
When I posted Session 0, I listed the characters' levels. I didn't do that this time because modules like X2 put the characters in a sweet spot where low-level characters rapidly catch up with somewhat higher-level characters due to the taking of gold. The party won 10,000 gps from Jean-Louis D'Amberville in Session 1.
In adapting this for my table, I have solved the railroad problem by allowing the characters to retreat to a point of safety outside of the Foyer. That's cool. However, the module was written as a railroad and doesn't take into account that if you subvert that point, the party could return to Jean-Louis's Salon over and over again.
Should 10,000 gps and 3 more Magen be available every time?
Yes-No. Jean-Louis and his Magen should be there, but should not offer a match to the players each time. At least not for money. That would be game-breaking because dumping 10,000 gps on the party would send their levels through the roof in short order.
Here is a handy post where I compare all of the character level charts from OSE. Since OSE doesn't have the concept of "Challenge Rating", you can use this chart to quickly determine how much experience is too much to hand out. It doesn't help with creating a combat scenario, but it will stop you from throwing too much cash at the party in one go. It also helps you determine how quickly low-level characters can catch up to higher ones and what classes will rapidly level.
Jude (formerly known as Punch) had this issue. In the B2 sessions, he struggled to keep up because he obtained most of his experience from combat, not treasure. In B/X, limiting the treasure is the best way to keep characters in a certain regime of play.
I don't know if we'll see Jean-Louis later, but I have a couple of ideas about how I would play him. He was a pomus ass at first, then morphed into a gamer and gambler. The next time the party sees him, I suspect he will act like a trainer, a promoter, and a coach. He should stay interesting, but slightly annoying, so the party doesn't get stuck. This is why I gave him a cell phone in the last session. Players would catch the meta of a pre-republic French dude trying to be an Instagram influencer. That's fun.
I believe I'll have time to post again on Saturday or Sunday.
In modern role-play, Castle Amber is challenging. There are so many moving parts, and the module is presented as a straight-up railroad.
In Session 0, I suggested that the DM either dispense with the mist/fog to stop the railroad. Or present it as a mysterious force that stymies the party. The module was written for an unknown cast of players and makes the obvious assumption that one purchased X2 to play X2. That requires the author to turn it into a railroad.
At your table, the motivation to explore Castle Amber can be different, specific to your campaign world. Therefore, you don't need to push so hard.
I have given these characters a version of "Horse Heaven", so that they feel safe in proceeding into the castle, and the question of the mist never came up. After setting up camp, the party walked right into the adventure.
Theoretically, the party could explore all of the castle without being forced or arm-twisted into slogging through the whole adventure. At least until they reach the gates to Averoigne. Then they are trapped.
The entry to Averoigne wouldn't be a surprise. They can back out, up until that moment.
This does present some flex in your campaign world. If the party can back out of Castle Amber, why can't other parties find it, too? That is where you need to get creative and make something different or special happen to the characters.
Anyway, let's get into Session 1.
The party has opted to enter the Grand Salon with Jean-Louis D'Amberville. If you opted for the railroad option, this is your first challenge. Most modern players would question Jean-Louis about the situation. I dodged that here by allowing the players to retreat to a safe zone.
Nononn is fully suited in his ghostie armor and throws open the door.
"Marvelous! Enchanting!" exclaims Jean-Louis. "Take it off! And step in the ring, please."
Nononn's ghostie armor should cause fear, but the D'Amberville family is highly magical and bat-shit crazy. I figured I'd put a lampshade on that from the get-go. That would give players a nice meta-jolt.
The party exchanges a few questions, while Jean-Louis encourages one of them to get in the ring with his Magen. Jean-Louis really wants Nonnon to be the first. Jean-Louis's bet is his suit of armor vs. the ghostie armor. As per the instructions, he also offers side bets. There is a lot of gold here, and therefore a lot of experience on the line.
The Magen is not much of a challenge to an equal-level character like Nononn, who is 4th level. This is because most characters with high strength, dexterity, and constitution have bonuses. What hinders the party is the fact that they don't know the Magen's stats, plus they have the opportunity to throw in the towel, whether the combatant wants it or not.
The challenge for the DM is managing a large party watching a single combat. I would sort the party by PLAYER demeanor. Those who want to fight go into one group, those who want to gamble go into another group, and those who are not interested in either of those go into the third group.
Before we go much further, let's have the overt commercial:
I use Necrotic Gnome's Old-School Essentials. I picked up the boxed sets from a Kickstarter. You can approximate this with two titles: The Referee's Tome and The Player's Tome. Or you could taste test it with the Basic Rules. These are free.
I mention this because this combat uses non-standard rules per the module. PC's do 1 or 2 HP of damage while the Magen does 1-3. Any time a combatant does max damage, there is 5% chance of a KO. Being reduced to zero kills a combatant. Each boxing round is 6 normal combat rounds, and there are 5 boxing rounds. Mechanically, we are talking 30 initiative rolls and 60 to hit rolls. This is why I split up the party into 3 groups.
I use one house rule at all times, which means I can't take it back for this scenario. All characters, including monsters, can go to -10 hp before dying. It makes death virtually impossible in this scenario. It also sets up a dramatic twist later. There is a second house rule in play that I will mention later.*
Those interested in boxing are engaged with Nononn, and Nononn's player can ask other players to make his die rolls if he wishes. Gamers are a superstitious lot and may want to switch who rolls and what dice are used for luck. They also get to throw in the towel for Nonnon, even against his wishes. This keeps them busy.
The gamblers are verbally engaged with Jean-Louis, making bets and throwing taunts. You want to have snappy patter going for them.
The last group will take over the DM's role and will roll the dice for the Demos Magen, including throwing in the towel. This sets up a little friendly hostility because they can screw the party with random die rolls or save the party by throwing in the party. Jean-Louis will meta-shit-talk them if they throw the towel without a good reason.
By breaking the party up into different groups, you get everyone engaged rather than 1 person rolling dozens of times while everyone else watches.
Remember, I mentioned that a like-level fighter has an advantage in this combat? That is not entirely true. They only have an advantage if they know the Magen's hit points. And only the group rolling the dice knows the Magen's hit points, and I ask them not to reveal them on pain of forfeit. They need this information so they know when to throw in the towel.
*My second house rule that is always in effect is "Just say it". If a player is discussing gameplay and tactics, but not speaking for their characters, they can use numbers and such. If they flip it around and have the characters speak about HP or levels, I'll break the fourth wall and mock them. This is important for this boxing match because it clues in the party as to Nononn's state of health.
Nononn doffs his armor and gets in the ring. The other two Magens signal the start of the match by stamping their feet. To make the insanity of the situation complete, the floating wizard's eyes appear, and Jean-Louis orders his Magens to cheer. I want the vibe to be Heath Ledger's William Thatcher vs. Heath Ledger's Joker. And here we have it.
Nononn is a beast of a fighter. He has more hit points, is harder to hit than the Magen, and he has a plus one to damage and to hit. At the end of the first round of boxing (six combat rounds), the Magen is down to 18 HP from 29, plus Nononn tags him for both a 20 to hit plus max damage at the end of the first. The Magen avoids being KO'ed. Nononn has 22 hp left.
In the middle of the second round, things go south for the party. The Magen rolls a pair of 20's in a row, rocking Nononn. He takes damage and rolls 94% and 06% to avoid being knocked out.
Remember what I said about players being a superstitious lot? Due to a fluke of the dice, Nononn happened to roll within one of the top five or bottom five on a 1d100. The team got spooked and threw in the towel. That's not how random or die rolls work, but that is the choice they made. Players do this all the time, but shouldn't.
Annoyed, Nononn climbs out of the ring, glaring at his friends. The party heals Nononn and more than a few characters ask for double or nothing.
Jean-Louis suits up in the ghostie armor and asks the party, "Do you really have enough for double or nothing?"
They do not. They do have 2500 gps and Jean-Louis bets his suit of +2 chainmail against them. Ana replaces Nononn in the ring. Jean-Louis orders one of the guardian Magens to take the place of the slightly banged-up Magen.
If anyone asks, the ghostie armor has turned into something unusual, but completely normal plate armor once Jean-Louis dons it. It is essentially non-magical now.
Ana and the Magen survive round one and round two, but the Magen goes down in round 3. Pleased, the Nononn accepts the +2 chainmail and suits up.
Back in December, I posted about my first and second run through of X2. And I would like to incorporate an event that happened decades ago. The party in that session healed the Demos Magenes they defeated, and a perplexed Jean-Louis asked:
"Why would you do that? They are just automata. A thing."
Jean-Louis is still super excited and dismisses the banged-up Magens to the corner, like broken toys. But he hasn't had this much fun in a long time, so he wants to go again. The third Magnus takes off his armor and gets in the ring.
The gang of gamblers wants to go big. In addition to the 2500 gps the party has, they offer a pair of +1 daggers, a +1 short sword, a bag of holding, and a cloak of elven kind as a wager.
"My, my. You are suddenly very rich, and perhaps on a winning streak."
The healed but bruised Demos groans at the condescending tone. He is now ashen, instead of the golden tone he started with. The party dismisses it as not remembering correctly, and Jean-Louis ignores the automata entirely.
The floating eyes examine the groaning creature, then the party's wager. After an oddly one-sided conversation with the eyes, Jean-Louis gives back the party bag of holding and bets 10,000 gps against the party's wager. Everyone is all smiles as Merry starts to strip off his armor.
Jean-Louis bellows, "Bravo!" and the party turns around. Jude, armor off, is standing in the middle of the ring.
"What a fine challenge this will be. The lightning bruiser against the magical automata!" Jean-Louis is not wrong. "Perhaps, you would like to accept my offer of magical preparation? I wish I had ordered food and libations for this." He pulls out a cell phone, but having no data here, puts it away.
Thomas enters the ring and bestows a blessing on Jude, who kneels to accept it. Jude has an 18 strength. He now has a +4 to hit and damage thanks to the spell. But he only has 18 hit points vs. the Magen's 29 HP. Rety and Bel consult each other as Sybil uses her magical Cloak of Wondrous Items to produce a pig on a spit.
Jean-Louis claps and 2 of his creatures approach to assist him out of his not-so-ghostie armor. The ashen Magen is nearly useless in this task, and Thomas takes an interest in him. It removes a guantlet and stops to examine it. The other Magen completes the task before it is finished.
After everyone is situated with food and drink, Jean-Louis asks if they are ready.
Rety replies, "Almost," then nods to Sybil.
"Wait!" shouts Jude as Sybil casts invisibility on him. Jean-Louis is not amused and mutters something about cheaters being drawn and quartered. The Wizard Eyes flutter around the boxing ring. The eyes face each other, bouncing up and down as if having an animated conversation.
The challenging Magen vanishes, as one of the eyes casts invisibility on it.
Jean-Louis chuckles appreciative and says, "With that, I believe we are ready."
For drama, Invisibility isn't canceled by attempting to attack. It's the rolling of damage that causes the spell to end. The first round of boxing doesn't go well. Jean-Louis roars with laughter as the two combatants stumble around the ring trying to find each other. Jude utters an oath, and the Magen fixates on his location. Jude moves, and the ring quakes as the Magen strikes the turnbuckles.
The party seems to be ok with this turn of affairs, continuing to engage with their host. The food and libations go down fast. The round ends, and the opponents retreat to their corners and the merriment continues.
The second round is a stunner. Both fighters come out of their corners swinging, and as a consequence, both drop their invisibility spells. The Magen strikes on each swing, but does poorly with damage rolls. When Jude hits, he rocks the Demos Magus hard.
They move on to the third and final round. Jude is staggered by a series of hits, stumbling around with one hit point left. The Knight pulls himself up and chases the Demos Magen now. Jean-Louis considers throwing the towel. Jude unloads 3 powerful hits to finish the fight.
The party cheers, and Jude comes out of the ring. They collect their winnings as Jude asks to retreat from this horrible place to rest. Thomas, Merry, and Dorian pour on the healing spells as the party cleans up. They have decided to exit Castle Amber and rest until the next morning.
Sybil laughs and smiles as she turns to recover the empty spit. Lance packs up the food, but Nononn and Thomas are dismayed.
Jean-Louis is pointing at the two Magens who received healing. Both have lost their golden luster and no longer respond to the man's orders. They dumbly allow themselves to be led out by Nononn and Thomas.
The party has won 10,000 gps and a +2 suit of armor.
In the yard outside the foyer, one Magen mumbles, "We don't remember our name."
I've been jonesing for a Sci-Fi game. I picked up the Free League Publishing Alien RPG, but before I did that, I took another look at both Star Smuggler and Star Frontiers.
All three games are very different from each other. Star Frontiers is very operatic, where characters can dish out and eat high levels of damage. It also has its own starship rules. Star Smuggler is more deadly. It is harder to dish out damage, but once it occurs, it's deadly. And Alien is exactly like movies - Survival is incumbent upon not letting the Aliens close.
The links above are to my review posts on these games. I have links to Brainiac to download Star Smuggler for free. Star Frontiers is available at DriveThruRPG. I haven't completed my review of Alien, so I don't have links at all.
I am forever tinkering with Star Smuggler. Right at the start of the book is a suggestion to use this game as a campaign guideline. Personally, I think it is just meaty enough to support an actual RPG. It does need slight modification to be usable as a standalone game.
First things first, it needs to allow for classes and levels. Duke, your avatar in the game is both multi-classed and higher level than typical NPC characters. If you allow your players to create a crew, then you don't need Duke. You DO need the ability to let characters rise to Duke's abilities.
What I am tinkering with is allowing each character to have a cunning stat like Duke. This stat is given a second purpose instead of bamboozling people. You can trade one point of cunning to increase one statistic by one point or trade 5 to learn a different trade.
For example, Duke can pilot, navigate, drive a skimmer, and operate starship guns. On the surface, this is done so that Duke can lead the NPC by filling certain roles. Since you won't have Duke anymore, the rest of the characters need his capabilities and the ability to grow and learn.
There are just a handful of scenarios that add cunning. To address this, I created a mechanism to increase cunning. Once per event, if a character hits the exact target number of a die roll, they increase their cunning by 1. I like this method as it morphs and shifts throughout play. You aren't trying to roll 2 sixes, but to exactly match your target. In many cases, some characters will have a chance to increase their cunning, while others will not.
For example, if the party has a shoot-out escaping from a planet, only those who make attack rolls can gain cunning. After combat, medics and engineers can gain Cunning by repairing and healing. The default rules don't make you roll for these actions. I would impose a roll of 1-3, where an exact roll of 3 results in success and a point of cunning. This can only occur once during RRR, no matter how many people are healed or how many items are repaired.
The next item that needs to be addressed is the money sink. You could maintain the default rules to pay off the ship's loan. It's clunky and requires paperwork.
One quirk of the rules is that Hypercharges are the only item I have noticed with a standard cost. If you wanted to eat cash quickly, change this to the base cost. This creates a cash sink that requires no paperwork. It also causes players to plan ahead so they aren't purchasing Hypercharges on a high-wealth planet. I feel it is both elegant and time-saving.
Since I love tinkering with stuff, there are a few events that bug me. In e081, you can capture a Battleship. But then the event says you can't keep it. I suspect that the reason is to stop game-breaking events and the ship is not entirely defined.
The whole scenario can be fixed by creating deckplans and statistics. I doubt this was expedient or practical when writing the solo adventure.
The Battleship is ridiculously huge, having 120 hits. The ship also behaves weirdly in combat under the pretense of a skeleton crew.
That makes sense.
There are two methods to take the Battleship. Either get lucky, which I have never done, or cheat. The easiest cheat that is not precluded is having more than one ship. Two Antelopes, with two shuttles each, can overwhelm the Battleship. The main issue is that the Battleship will waste shots on the shuttles while your Antelopes close for the kill. It's a lot of die rolls, but it is doable.
It's hard to do, but nothing stops you from having several ships. It is highly likely that multiple players can coordinate the attack. If you allow for boarding actions, it becomes more reasonable.
The deckplan to the left is what I came up with for a Pocket Battleship. I would use a fully crewed Battleship so that it has a chance against an attack.
The ship has several features that make it stand out against normal ships. First, the crew quarters are divided into 6-man pods. A critical hit only affects one pod. The crew quarters are protected against mass decompression. This setup allows for both the skeleton crew option in the game while also allowing for a full 60-man crew.
The infirmary is likewise protected; it can't take a critical hit at all. It is only destroyed when the whole ship is destroyed.
It has 2 gun batteries, left and right. Batteries operate just like regular ship guns, except they operate as a unit. One six-gun battery can only fire on one target. To give the ship some teeth, it has one bow chaser turret and two stern guns for use against smaller ships like the hopper.
Speaking of hoppers, this ship is equipped with two improved hoppers. The main difference is how the cargo and crew are divvied up. These are more troop transports than fighting ships. You could mount guns, or you can drop 6-7 crew on a planet with a skimmer, with space for LSU and Fuel. The last feature is a garage large enough to hold a tank. I have depicted the ship with two skimmers instead.
Players taking the ship will immediately experience the skeleton crew problem themselves. It is unlikely any party would have the 14-16 starship gunners necessary to utilize all of the guns.
I just picked up a copy of Alien by Free League Publishing at Great Escape in the Waldern Galleria mall. I can't think of the last time I went to a local shop in the mall and found a game I liked there. Here is a link to the PDF on DriveThru.
The Alien Franchise ticks all of the boxes for me. Horror, Spaceships, Aliens, and Space Marines.
This book is packed with details. It's hundreds of pages of rules, setting information, and pictures. I can't wait to review it.
I struggled to find a copy online and paid a tiny bit more at Great Escape, but ended up with exactly what I wanted. They do have a starter set for less, but I decided to skip over that for the moment. Don't let that fool you, I will be buying the starter set, because I love those things.
Now that I am parsing the rules, I will purchase some dice for this game. One of the nice things about this ruleset is the trackable consumables. I have a half dozen Atlas Games The White Box Set for tracking every conceivable item.
From the photo to the left, you can see I got impatient and created some of my own dice and a box to hold them. I need to print some character sheets. I'll use these.
The box was laser-cut. For the dice, I used DollarStore wood cubes and a set of steel dies to punch the numbers in. They are very rustic, fitting the crapsack world of Alien.
Anyway, back to the rules set. It's several hundred pages. The rules are well organized, neat, and easy to read, but it is still 300+ pages to digest. This is going to take a while.
The art is really nice. It captures the world of Weyland-Yutani, across all eras. The shifts from Corporate White and Green, to gritty images of the nooks and crannies where humans and Xenomorphs really compete.
While this is horror-based, the art doesn't descend into gore. It also doesn't try to reproduce the films. There are a few pictures where you think you see Ripley or Hudson, but they don't come off as copies of the film. They capture the films from a slightly different angle than what you saw on-screen, as if you were tapped into a different helmet feed. I like it.
I can't wait to dig into this RPG, play, and review it.
